Sinn Féin MLA for Newry and Armagh
@conormurphysf UK Parliament Profile Northern Ireland Assembly Profile
Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle. [Translation: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker.] I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion. Although the Department of Education leads on childcare, it is a priority for the Executive as a whole. When setting the Budget for this financial year, the Executive earmarked an additional £25 million for childcare. As part of...
Just last week, I engaged with the Labour Relations Agency (LRA) forum, on which a number of business organisations are represented. I did not hear that level of concern, but, if the Member has, we will endeavour to engage on that. The report to the Committee last week was, if you like, a summation report on the consultation. The next step is to develop that into policy, which would...
Just last week, we launched the task force report on tourism and hospitality, in which there is an ambition to grow that industry and its income. I hope that, in doing that, we will secure employment for people and businesses in that sector. I have no doubt that these are challenging times. We came out of COVID, with all the challenges that it presented, particularly to hospitality and other...
The Finance Minister will bring rates proposals to the Executive shortly, and I think that she intends to provide as much support as she can to the business community. When I was the Minister of Finance, we reduced the business rate by 18% because we recognised that it was a high burden. The vast bulk of our businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises, so that was a challenge to them. I...
We have done an energy efficiency scheme for businesses through Invest NI, and we want to look at what more we can do for domestic customers. The challenge, as ever, for every Department is to have the finances to be able to do those things. Executive targets for reducing carbon emissions will include the need for much more energy efficiency. Much more energy efficiency will therefore be...
As I stand here today, I cannot. I would need to get some sense of its effectiveness. I am, however, happy to write to the Member in the time ahead. We will consider any schemes that are effective or working well and that we can afford to do. Affordability is a key issue for us. One then has to set that against the potential for missing targets and what that would do to society here. We will...
The short answer is this: very challenging. Like, I have no doubt, most Departments, we got much less than what we bid for. That will present real challenges for us in areas such as skills and higher and further education, as well as for everything else that the Department is committed to supporting in the time ahead. We have been meeting regularly — both before and since Christmas — to...
As I said in response to a previous question, the expansion to 10,000 students for the Magee project was a New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) commitment. All parties that were turning into Executive parties at that stage were committed to it, as were both Governments, who also had a contribution to make in that regard, because both of them drafted that particular agreement. That commitment has...
